


thoughts

by HopeHazard



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Sad Caleb Widogast, Stream of Consciousness, slight canon divergence?, takes place in the middle of ep92
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22397257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeHazard/pseuds/HopeHazard
Summary: Do you love her?Oh, how could he not?
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Kudos: 53





	thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> no beta, we die like men
> 
> seriously, I wrote this in one go, immediately after finishing episode 92, barely proofread, definitely didn't edit too heavily. It's as much Caleb's stream of consciousness as it is mine. 
> 
> Just trying to get back into writing in general with the idea that it doesn't have to be perfect or even that good, just as long as I'm writing something.

_Do you love her?_

He’s in the middle of their little convoy, all of them a comfortable distance apart. There’s no need to be tight-knit, the land is open enough that they’ll easily see any threat long before it reaches them, and their pace is comfortable. Yasha, he knows, is in the very back. Nott is parallel to him, though a few feet to his left. He can hear Fjord and Caduceus talking behind him, though he’s not paying attention to the words. His attention, instead, is on the ringing laughter ahead of him. On blue hair tossed back happily. On the bells attached to curved horns; they would be jingling, he knew, but they are drowned out by the rain around them and their distance. She shakes her head at whatever it is Beau is saying, and he catches sight of a grin from the monk from where she’s half-turned, focusing on the other woman. Soaked to the bone, on their way to what is sure to be a tense (at best) family reunion, and she still somehow manages to be a source of light and laughter.

His heart, not for the first time (nor the last), skips a beat, and his hands tighten on his reins.

_Who?_

Surely it isn’t obvious. Surely _nothing_ about him, his thoughts, his feelings, is obvious. He’s spent so long-- _so_ long--learning to hide, to school himself, to remain impassive-- _if they know you, if they can read you, they can use you, they can abuse you_. Words he had repeated to himself time and time again. Surely he isn’t obvious. 

_I do not need to tell you who_.

Perhaps it isn’t his fault. Or rather, perhaps he wasn’t actually _careless_ with his feelings. Perhaps he just underestimated her. In this regard, anyway. Of course he knows not to underestimate Yasha in a fight, he has eyes, after all, one only had to _look_ at her to know that she is not to be approached carelessly. And he has seen her _in action_ , he knows how deadly she can be, knows all too well.

But _this_ … He had not expected this from her, of all people. Caduceus, maybe. He had a way of reading people that was certainly unsettling, a little worrisome, but he was also cryptic by nature, and it was clear that he didn’t verbalize even half of his thoughts, and so Caleb was confident that anything he _had_ picked up on would stay safely behind a closed mouth.

Not that he was concerned that Yasha would tell anybody. No, for better or for worse, Caleb trusts her, trusts all of them, and all of them know the power and importance of secrets. But _still_. Even if she is the only one to know, that is one too many.

_As someone who has lost someone that they love very much, I know how important it is to say things before it is too late._

It’s too late, he had said. It’s already too late. And it is. It had been too late from the beginning.

He is--

Well. As he had said. They don’t deserve their friends. _He,_ especially, doesn’t deserve them. He is not a good person. He is doing better, sure; helping his friends with their problems, attempting to broker peace between two warring nations are noble causes. But his hands are stained and they will _never_ be clean, he knows this, he’s _accepted_ this for _himself_ , but he would sooner die than stain _her_ , too. She is pristine, and he would go to the ends of the earth to maintain that. It’s what _she_ deserves.

It is too late. 

_Maybe not, I don’t know._

_He_ knows. Yasha’s words should be comforting, but instead they weigh heavy in his mind and his heart and his stomach, because he _knows_ , it is too late, it is too late, and he has to remind himself of that, because if he doesn’t…

If he doesn’t, he will begin to doubt, to hope, and he cannot afford that, _will not_ allow that for himself, not to have it dashed and leave him even more broken than he already is. He has been through so much, and he has come out the other side of it all, but there is only so much a man can handle, and that… That, he does not know if he could handle. 

The sound of his name catches his attention, and his eyes snap forward. Swiftly, two heads turn away, giggles just barely heard over the rain. Violet eyes glance back and meet his for a moment, and he cannot help but offer a soft smile in return to a bright grin.

Oh, how could he not?


End file.
